This collection brings together Buddhist figures that operate outside the core sculptural frameworks of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Myoo. It includes Heavenly Beings (Tenbu) as well as other deities shaped by specific roles, functions, and historical contexts within Japanese Buddhist practice.
Unlike the more unified iconographic systems of the central categories, these figures were often defined by purpose rather than doctrine—guardians, protectors, attendants, or localized objects of devotion. Their forms reflect this diversity: sometimes formal and hierarchical, sometimes adaptive, shaped by ritual use and regional tradition.
Presented together, these statues reveal a broader structure of Buddhist visual culture—one sustained not only by enlightenment figures, but also by the layered network of forces that supported practice, space, and belief. Viewed in this way, they are not peripheral, but essential to understanding how Buddhist imagery functioned in lived contexts.